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Old 01-29-2018, 03:15 PM   #223
Icelander
 
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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When the heavy metal door to the patient isolation room opens, Chase Taylor is still sitting in the same position on the padded floor, his back to the wall. The light in the room hasn’t been turned on and the brightness from the hall is blinding in comparison. The figure opening the door is a huge, bald African-American man in a suit, while a younger, smaller Caucasian with a high and tight haircut covers Taylor with an M4 carbine topped with an Aimpoint M68 CCO.

Despite the distraction of the glare to his dark adapted eyes, Taylor has no difficulty recognising Chief Warrant Officer (CW3) DeMarcus Worley and Staff Sergeant (SSG) Kevin Kowalski, the two US Army CID detectives who transported him from USDB Ft. Leavenworth. For a few seconds, Taylor continues staring blankly ahead, but then his ‘Bama manners and a need for some human contact compel him to speak.

Taylor: “Hey, y’all.”
CW3 Worley [deep, gravelly bass]: “I’m gonna ask you to stand up and turn around. Make it easier for us to handcuff you.”
Taylor: “Sure, Worley.”

With evident pain, Taylor raises himself from the floor and starts to assume the position. CW3 Worley turns on the light in the room and whistles softly when he sees the bloody rag on Taylor’s arm and the burns on his shoulder and side.

CW3 Worley: “You haven’t had a doctor look at you?”
Taylor: “Reckon my insurance won’t cover it.”
Worley: “Aw, hell. I can’t cuff you like that. It must hurt like a sonoffabitch. Just move real slow and don’t come within arm’s reach of either one of us. You’re not gonna do anything stupid, are you?”
Taylor: “Ain’t planning on it none. Don’t figure I got no call to hurt you, neither.”
Worley: “Long as you keep that in mind, Taylor.”
SSG Kowalski: “Yeah, you take one step I don’t like and I’ll blow your [fornicating] head off!”
Worley: “Just mosey on out, Taylor, and walk ahead of Staff Sergeant Kowalski. We’re going to be walking over the lawn to the medical building.”
Taylor: “I ain’t fixin’ to give you any trouble.”

As he speaks, Taylor walks very slowly out of the room, his hands held out from his sides. He starts walking at a leisurely pace, limping slightly, with SSG Kowalski following him, still aiming the rifle at him. At the door leading outside, there is a Coast Guardsman wearing jumpsuit, tactical gear and an Mk18 assault carbine. He opens the door and Taylor heads out.

The three men cross the grounds of Manhanock Asylum in uneventful silence, until Taylor can no longer contain himself.

Taylor: “I figure you ain’t supposed to brief me none, but can you jes’ tell me if Sherilyn Bell is okay? Are they treating her right? Is she being allowed to see Doc Anderson?”
CW3 Worley: “They’re treating her fine. That’s all I can tell you.”
Taylor: “An’ what about everybody else? Is the doc an’ all them all okay?”
Worley: “No fatalities since the Coast Guard touched down last night. Medical response going well. As far as I know, everybody doing good, considering.”
Taylor: “God bless you, Worley.”
Worley [resonant]: “Amen.”

Waking past another Coast Guard sentry, the threesome pass through a gate in the wall surrounding the main Manhanock complex and its grounds, and then enter the medical building just outside of it. Asking Taylor and SSG Kowalski to stay put in a waiting area where a harried man in civilian clothing is manning a computer, CW3 Worley goes on ahead. He comes back a couple of minutes later, still stone-faced, but Taylor can tell he’s unhappy about something.

CW3 Worley: “I’m sorry about this, Taylor. We’re gonna have to go right into an interview room. Believe me, this isn’t how I operate, but I’m not in charge.”
Taylor: “Don’t worry about it none. Ain’t nobody’s fault. An’ thanks, Worley.”

With a nod of his cragged head, Worley leads Taylor and Kowalski along a corridor, to an office with a closed door. He knocks on the door and is rewarded with a voice telling him to come in. Inside the office are two people, a distinguished Caucasian gentleman in the process of yielding gracefully to middle age, wearing a nice blue suit, and an Asian woman in her early thirties dressed in business casual clothing. They are sitting behind a desk and on the other side is an empty chair, waiting for Taylor.

Man: “Thank you, Worley. You may leave him here.”
CW3 Worley: “You’re aware I’ll be protesting up my chain of command, sir?”
Man: “Before you do, I suggest you speak with Zachary Holden. He’ll go over the security ramifications with you. We wouldn’t want you to accidentally speak with anyone who was not read in.”
Worley: “Sir.”

Stiffly, CW3 Worley turns to leave. Only when he closes the door behind Taylor does SSG Kowalski stop aiming his M4 at Taylor’s back and appearing very much like he’s just looking for an opportunity to pull the trigger.

Agent Richardson: “I’m Special Agent Gerald Richardson, Office of the Inspector General. Or Joint Task Force Onyx Rain, if you prefer. This is Special Agent Adeline Wong.”
Taylor: “Right glad to make y’all’s acquaintance. I reckon you’d know I’m Chase Taylor.”
Richardson: “We do. Please take a seat and let’s get started.”

Agent Wong begins by reading Taylor his Miranda rights. Then she asks the requisite administrative questions, full name, social security, legal residence and profession, noting down the answers and asking for clarifications on Taylor’s temporary employment by the Department of Homeland Security. After noting down the substance of the consultant contract Taylor signed in Washington D.C. and what Director Gujarat wanted Taylor to do for her, Wong moves on to the substance of the interview.

Agent Wong: “Prisoner Taylor, can you tell me, in your own words, what happened after you left Homeland Security headquarters on Friday morning and until you were detained by the US Coast Guard this morning?”
Taylor: “I surely could. An’ jes’ Taylor would do fine.”
Wong: “It’s not up to you how you are addressed, Prisoner Taylor. Proceed with your testimony.”

Taking his notebook out of his pocket, Taylor starts to deliver his after-action report. His narrative is surprisingly detailed, accurate and coherent, carefully distinguishing between fact, observed evidence, inferences, deductions and speculations. With a very few exceptions, he narrates exactly what he has witnessed from the beginning of his adventure on behalf of Homeland Security, leaving out nothing his formidable senses uncovered.

The only events about which he is less than perfectly forthcoming are those having to do with Sherilyn Bell’s mysterious gifts, and, more generally, their more intimate interactions. Taylor doesn’t shy away from describing Bell’s physical gifts and deducing a probable connection to Project Jade Serenity, but he carefully avoids mentioning anything that hints at her ability to project mental illusions. Taylor doesn’t mention O’Toole’s or Dr. Anderson’s secret powers either, but in that case, it is because he has not seen any evidence of them.

About his private conversations with Sherilyn Bell in the guards’ barracks, he says only, generally, that they spoke of their shared past and their lives since they were parted.

Richardson: “Can you elaborate?”
Taylor: “I don’t reckon I can, no, sir. The lady done had herself a real bad time an’ we spoke in private. You’d best speak with her if’n you’re after hearing more about her time here.”

Agent Adeline Wong is giving Taylor a hard look that doesn’t look very friendly. Trying to pretend that it doesn’t bother him, Taylor continues his story. He describes their attempts to summon help, their flight through the tunnels, discovery of Judith York, all the tracks and evidence they found in the tunnels and their encounter with the strange rats of Jewell Island.

Taylor’s observations about the rats may lack the professional understanding of a biologist, but as the basis for a threat assessment, he has noted every salient fact. Taylor’s own analysis of the extreme threat to human life on Earth presented by a new species of hyper-intelligent rats, which appear from their numbers to be able to breed true, is both cogent and sobering.*

More or less all sources of food and water for urban populations of humans are extremely vulnerable to sabotage by intelligent beings the size and shape of rats and countermeasures that work on regular rodents would have a very low success rate against creatures even close to sapience. Human civilization, in its current form, could not survive a war against a population of sapient rats that expanded at an exponential rate similar to the breeding capabilities of ordinary rats.

Taylor: “I don’t know they exact time it would take, sir, but I figure that if even one breeding pair makes it off Jewell Island, the rats would displace regular ol’ rats everywhere within less than a human generation. An’ Jewell Island may already be within swimming range of somewhere else for these rats. If’n they are hostile to us, I reckon we need a plan to make sure they ain’t never gonna breed in the wild. You’d best get APHIS an’ whoever responds to bio-attacks on CONUS on it soonest.”

After carefully noting down specifics on the threat posed by the rats, Agent Richardson takes over the questioning. Without much prompting, Taylor resumes his narrative, describing the fight with guards in the main complex. He’s reticent about his argument with Bell there, but forthcoming about everything else, including the severe injuries suffered by guards from flashbangs and his brutal hand-to-hand combat with Warden Tyrrell.

*Observation success by 18, Intelligence Analysis success by 8.
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Last edited by Icelander; 02-07-2018 at 05:26 AM.
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